RichM Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 As you all know, it's a long time since the hey day of the Spectrum +2. You knew where you were with 128K etc etc. But what about all this Pentium 4, Celeron, Aeon stuff. What's the best? If I buy a pukka new Dell PC, what do I go for? I want to play Enemy Territory and run a hi-spec stats programme. We have a Celeron laptop and it gets too hot when I play ET which is pants. I just don't understand. I'm a bit drunk and I need some help. Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classixuk Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 As you all know, it's a long time since the hey day of the Spectrum +2. You knew where you were with 128K etc etc. But what about all this Pentium 4, Celeron, Aeon stuff. What's the best? If I buy a pukka new Dell PC, what do I go for? I want to play Enemy Territory and run a hi-spec stats programme. We have a Celeron laptop and it gets too hot when I play ET which is pants. I just don't understand. I'm a bit drunk and I need some help. Cheers. Don't buy a Dell RichM (or a Medion, or Microstar for that matter) as in my experience you will have great difficulty upgrading them. If you will be doing alot of video editing then go for a pentium. If you want fast 3D graphics in your games then go for an AMD64. My choice? An AMD64 bit processor would be ideal. Something like the AMD64 3200 is reasonably costed and will give great performance. Make sure the motherboard is PCI express for graphics rather than AGP as AGP is being phased out completely over the next 12 months. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erd Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 As you all know, it's a long time since the hey day of the Spectrum +2. You knew where you were with 128K etc etc. But what about all this Pentium 4, Celeron, Aeon stuff. What's the best? If I buy a pukka new Dell PC, what do I go for? I want to play Enemy Territory and run a hi-spec stats programme. We have a Celeron laptop and it gets too hot when I play ET which is pants. I just don't understand. I'm a bit drunk and I need some help. Cheers. I have been looking at upgrading my PC, here's what is on my list: amd x2 dual core 4200 processor Asustek A8N-E motherboard PC3200 2x1GB memory (2x512mb would be fine also) Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Music XFX GeForce 7900GT XT 256MB (a cheaper card would be acceptable!) Wrap it all up in a nice case, big hard disk and make sure you get a decent power supply (420w minimum). You are looking at around £900 for that lot, but you could cut the memory to 1GB and change the graphics card to a lower spec one in order to save at least a couple hundred pounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ʎqɐqɹǝʞɐɥs Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Don't buy a Dell RichM (or a Medion, or Microstar for that matter) as in my experience you will have great difficulty upgrading them. If you will be doing alot of video editing then go for a pentium. If you want fast 3D graphics in your games then go for an AMD64. My choice? An AMD64 bit processor would be ideal. Something like the AMD64 3200 is reasonably costed and will give great performance. Make sure the motherboard is PCI express for graphics rather than AGP as AGP is being phased out completely over the next 12 months. Good luck! Not bad for a hairdresser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Whatever you do on a pc you will encounter what is known as a bottleneck. This is the component which slows down what you want to do. Gaming these days you need 2GB of ram, and a decent graphics card. CPU is rarely a major issue. The X800/X850 or the 6800 is the lowest level you should come in at. These will go about £100 for 2GB ram, and about £100 for the graphics. A decent sata hard drive will go around £60 (250GB+ 8Mb cache 7200rpm). Graphics come in 2 main flavours - AGP and PCI-X (PCI Express). AGP is the old style, being phased out (as has been mentioned), and the cards are now more expensive(preying on the chaps like me with decent AGP systems needing new graphics cards). One of the big decisions is what cpu 'socket' to go for - this determines which families of cpu you can use. Basically you should be looking to ignore socket A (being phased out), socket 939 (amd) or socket 775(intel). Both have good points. Personally I go amd, but there is no really good reason for that. I would recommend: Socket 939 motherboard, with sata on board, pci-x, on board NIC £60 AMD 64 3200 (retail version includes a heatsink) £90 2GB ram (cas 2 if you can find it) £100 250GB sata II 7200 rpm 8MB+ cache £60 ATI X850PE @£150 or ati X1600 @£85 audigy sound card £20 Case + psu £40 Not a dream machine, but for modern gaming its still pretty competetive, and only sets you back about £450. Many places will assemble it for you too. Items to shave off: Cut it down to 1GB of ram. 2x512mb DDR can be had for £65. (make sure the motherboard supports 4xDDR modules to expand later without replacing the existing memory) Drop down to an AMD 64 3000 at about £70 or go Intel route for a slower celeron at £50. A nice 19" tft with a good refresh rate goes about £180 and gives the same viewable screen size as a 21" CRT. Keyboard and mouse for about £30 Looking at about £700 all in. add Win XP home for £60.... Or you could be a cheapskate and go for an end of life machine (like mine, which does the job (I play a lot of BF2 etc). Socket A mobo £25 (AGP) Socket A sempron 2800 £45 80gb harddrive £30 x1600 AGP graphics £85 1GB ram £65 audigy £20 case £25 which I reckon you can do all in for under £300. Personally I would spend the extra £150. Or get something similar off ebay for not a lot. Oh yes, one of the most important resources is tomshardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erd Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 One of the big decisions is what cpu 'socket' to go for - this determines which families of cpu you can use. Basically you should be looking to ignore socket A (being phased out), socket 939 (amd) or socket 775(intel). In terms of amd, socket AM2 is going to replace socket 939 in the next couple of months, along with bringing in a DDR2 memory controller within the cpu. I would spend more to get a decent psu if you are going for a high end graphics card, they need quite a bit of stable power when running the latest 3D games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libitina Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Not bad for a hairdresser. Sad thing is, I understand what he's saying! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Note that PCI-X and PCI Express are two totally different and incompatible buses, you'll only confuse people if you ask for a PCI-X graphics card . Personally I've found Dells are fine so long as you never open the case: it's the moment you decide you want to upgrade one that the problems start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libitina Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Note that PCI-X and PCI Express are two totally different and incompatible buses, you'll only confuse people if you ask for a PCI-X graphics card . Personally I've found Dells are fine so long as you never open the case: it's the moment you decide you want to upgrade one that the problems start. Isn't their warranty void the second you take off the side panel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Quite likely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classixuk Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Not bad for a hairdresser. I have decided to no longer speak with people who "shake a baby" as I have deemed it to be cruel and unnecessary to do such things. A quick smack on the bottom is more than sufficient so please consider changing your username to smackedar$e. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ʎqɐqɹǝʞɐɥs Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Sad thing is, I understand what he's saying! Not bad for a nurse wannabe! I have decided to no longer speak with people who "shake a baby" as I have deemed it to be cruel and unnecessary to do such things. A quick smack on the bottom is more than sufficient so please consider changing your username to smackedar$e. Let me get back to you on this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyShears Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Don't buy a Dell RichM (or a Medion, or Microstar for that matter) as in my experience you will have great difficulty upgrading them. If you will be doing alot of video editing then go for a pentium. If you want fast 3D graphics in your games then go for an AMD64. My choice? An AMD64 bit processor would be ideal. Something like the AMD64 3200 is reasonably costed and will give great performance. Make sure the motherboard is PCI express for graphics rather than AGP as AGP is being phased out completely over the next 12 months. Good luck! I would go for an AMD X2 processor if you're going to be running compute intensive stuff. They're not much more expensive than the standard processor, and will be useful if you're going to run more than one program at once. If your stats package supports multiple processors, definitely go for the X2 or other dual core processor. I'd go online and research the best motherboard to use. At work I have an AMD64 3800X2 with a Gigabyte motherboard. I'm not 100% sure that the Gigabyte motherboard was the way to go. But it certainly works and has PCI-E. Billy Shears Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libitina Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Not bad for a nurse wannabe! *preens* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichM Posted April 18, 2006 Author Share Posted April 18, 2006 Cheers everyone. Just need a decent sized flat to keep such a machine in! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theChuz Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 Cheers everyone. Just need a decent sized flat to keep such a machine in! Consider a laptop Although you've made reference to the speccy so i should probably point out that PC's are smaller than the old mainframes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thunderbird900 Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 I find Pentium 4 runs very hot. The fans are usually quite noisy. Try an AMD Athlon. Lovely and quiet in the right box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest The_Oldie Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 All AMD for me. Dual Opteron 64s in the office and a Turion 64 in the laptop. The Turion 2.2Ghz in the laptop runs cooler that my previous 1.5Ghz Centrino (Mobile P4). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichM Posted April 18, 2006 Author Share Posted April 18, 2006 Oh the fan, what a pain in the backside. I open a couple of IEs and the fan cranks up. Well annoying that is. I'll look out for this AMD thing then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichM Posted April 18, 2006 Author Share Posted April 18, 2006 Went online today to see if I could get a cheap tape drive for my "laptop". Apparently people have moved away from tapes to memory sticks. I got a 1GB one for 20 quid incl p&p on Amazon which I thought was a very good buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonewer Posted April 19, 2006 Share Posted April 19, 2006 I recentley upgraded and got a 3gig Sempron (cheapo AMD) with 1Gig RAM and a 256Meg 6600 for graphics. It runs Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R pretty well- which is all I need at the moment. F.E.A.R is supposedly one the of most resource intensive games out there.......... I dont see the point in spending £900 for a really good machine when its going to be worthless crap in 18 months anyway- PCI-Ex will likely be yesterdays news by 2008 in any case. I'd rather spend half (£420) as much and upgrade every 18 months to two years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rave Posted April 20, 2006 Share Posted April 20, 2006 Right....loads of recommendations thrown around, very little in the way of finding out what he actually needs. The most important queastion is: laptop or desktop? If it's a laptop you need, then the latest Intel Core Duos are the way to go. They run cooler and faster than any Turion AMD has to offer. At the budget end of the scale, Intel Pentium Ms and Celeron Ms are also very good, and are much much better than the Pentium 4 and Celeron 4 mobile processors. Ignore the outright clockspeed, a Celeron M 370 at 1.5GHz will whip a 2.4GHz Mobile Celeron, because it has a much more efficient architecture, and does much more work per clock cycle. They use a lot less power too, which reduces the burnt nuts effect when actually used on one's lap. If it's a desktop on the other hand- AMD 64 all the way. They...er....run cooler and faster than any P4 Intel has to offer. Until, that is, Intel release their new 'Conroe' processors in July/August- AMD don't seem to have much of an answer to those. Anyway though, it's hard to buy an underpowered desktop nowadays unless you want to play games....in which case get a seperate graphics card in a PCI-Express slot so you can upgrade later. 6600s and 7600s/7900s all give good value for money right now.... ....except that you say you want to run Enemy Territory. ET is a freakin' wicked game, but it runs like greased weasel sh1t on any old hardware- I play at 1600x1200 with all details maxed on my ATi 9700 with core/mem at 180/200. I daresay it would run pretty well on Intel 'Extreme' integrated graphics- certainly any recent NVidia or ATi integrated graphics will be more than enough. If ET is all you want to play, save your money and spend it on beer or risky put options. When you're playing, look out for me- |HV|RavemasterX, I usually play on Bunker No.1, or if it's down $hitstorm Extreme and similar . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichM Posted April 20, 2006 Author Share Posted April 20, 2006 Cheers Rave. I got confused with PCs - once upon a time it was Speccy, then Speccy 48K, then Speccy +2 etc. Then you had a 286, then a 386, then a 486, and then (this was clever) a Pentium (those of you who know a bit of Latin will get it), then a Pentium 2, a Pentium 3, then a Pentium 4. Buy hey, what's this Celeron all about it, where does it fit? And now there's AMD which is totally different altogether. It's been an education, I tell thee. BTW, my 20 quid 1Gb memory stick has just turned up, a Samsung one it is! buymemorycards.co.uk or on Amazon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rave Posted April 20, 2006 Share Posted April 20, 2006 Celerons are always a cut down version of the current Pentium- they have less cache and generally run at slower clock speeds and bus speeds. AMD used to reverse engineer Intel chips up to the 486 (I think) but Intel sued and put a stop to it. After that they came up with the K6 chips which weren't especially competitive with Intel, and the K7 'Athlon' chips which definately were. The AMD equivalent of the Celeron is called a Sempron (previously called Duron). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ʎqɐqɹǝʞɐɥs Posted April 20, 2006 Share Posted April 20, 2006 Oh the fan, what a pain in the backside. I open a couple of IEs and the fan cranks up. Well annoying that is. I'll look out for this AMD thing then. Why arent you useing Mozilla Firefox RichM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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